


Girl of Your Dreams

by Fudgyokra



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Brief Gore, Can be one-sided or requited it's up to the reader, Character Death, Dreams, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Ghost!Wendy, Ghosts, Minor Violence, Post-Canon, Pre-Weirdmageddon, Self-Sacrifice, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: She looked like a lifeless doll as she fell. She didn't even scream.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreightTrainFrank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreightTrainFrank/gifts).



> Wonderful art to go along with this can be found at aawesomewendip.tumblr.com/image/155463560628

She looked beautiful in sunglasses.

Wendy looked beautiful in anything, so Dipper thought nothing of particular stylistic choices, especially in this happy little town where everything was bright; ironically, the sun shined brighter in a world threatening to be overtaken.

He could’ve looked at her forever thinking about how many people he could lose to Bill’s wrath, but now was not the time, and here was not the place.

“Dude,” Wendy said to him suddenly, waving a hand in front of his blank face. “We gotta find Mabel, man.”

He knew she was right. Something about the way the lake beside them glittered made everything seem a lot less urgent, though. What was wrong with him?

“I dunno,” he said, mouth acting against his mind. “She’s probably doing fine by herself.”

Wendy smiled at him and leaned back on her palms in the grass. “Y’know, you’re right. You two can take care of yourselves pretty well.”

In lieu of speech, Dipper smiled and tried to make it look like it was not hard for him to swallow. He watched Wendy tuck her hair behind her ear and nearly flinched when she spoke again.

“Hey, I wanna know something, though.”

“Know what?” he asked, his tone a tragically obvious mix of defensive and panicked.

“That crazy, swirly snow globe in your backpack… What _is_ it, exactly?”

Dipper felt the barest touch on his arm and, assuming it was a bug, swatted it away. Or perhaps he had just imagined it. “Oh, that? It’s hard to explain, but—”

“It looks super cool,” Wendy continued. “Can I see it?”

That strange feeling on his arm was back, almost like a bizarre wind chill. Hesitantly, he unzipped his backpack. “I guess so. But be careful with it—breaking this thing would be…” he presented it to her and finished lamely with, “…really bad.”

“Doy,” Wendy returned with a laugh. She held her hands out as if waiting for a small animal to be deposited into them. “I’ll be super careful.”

The moment the snow globe passed from his hand to hers he felt odd. It wasn’t the skin-to-skin contact, or the gentle way Wendy cupped it even as she rose to her feet, like it was something precious to her specifically. It was the way the sunlight glinted off those dark brown sunglasses, Dipper realized with a twisting sensation in his gut. There wasn’t anything weird about that. Shouldn’t have been, anyway. But, oh, there very much _was_ something wrong with that, though he realized it a nanosecond before it could have very well killed him.

Time almost seemed to be in slow-motion when the axe materialized in Wendy’s hand and Dipper thanked whatever deity might have been listening for the sudden glitch in the matrix. He dove for the rift and rolled just out of reach of the blade as it wedged into the earth beside his head. With his heart in his throat he ran away from the beautiful girl with the cackling voice of one Bill Cipher, and, as he expected, Bill willed the girl to follow.

“Dipper, wait up!” Bill called, using Wendy’s voice again. “I have something _really_ important to tell you!”

Dipper darted into the woods, praying the trees would shroud him from the glowing eyes of this incessant devil. He ran until his lungs threatened to shrivel up before he collapsed to the ground in front of a large wood chipper. It must have been abandoned for quite some time if the peeling red paint gave any indications, but it didn’t look altogether obsolete. Wearily he leaned his forehead on the cool metal and paused there, letting his breathing go from burning rasps to something more controlled.

The moment he was able to take his first comfortable breath he heard leaves crunching behind him. He didn’t bother to look up. “You can’t have the rift, Bill. I won’t let you take it.” When he felt something touch his arm he stood up to look behind him, only to find that there was no one there. He stared into the nothingness for a moment until a tired gust of wind blew his hat clear off his head. What concerned him more than that, however, was that it _remained_ there, suspended in mid-air right in front of him.

“Dipper!” Wendy’s voice said, coming directly from the hat.

Something in Dipper’s mind clicked into place. “Oh my gosh, Wendy!” He reached out as if to touch her, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to. “This is bad. Really bad,” he said to himself, rubbing his temples. “Wendy, what does Bill want from you? Why does he have your body?”

“He totally tricked me, man! It was something about—”

“About what, Red?” Bill’s voice cut in as he stepped into the clearing, boasting a wicked grin that looked very strange on Wendy’s pale face. “You really shouldn’t kiss and tell. It’s _rude!_ ” He wasted no more time lunging for Dipper, knocking him back against the wood chipper with enough force to render him temporarily disoriented. “Woah, this body’s a _lot_ stronger than yours, Pine Tree!”

Dipper grabbed Wendy’s upper arms and tried to push her body away, but Bill only leaned forward, putting their faces unnervingly close.

“Careful you don’t bruise the goods,” he said with a cackle. “You wouldn’t want to hurt her, would you?” Immediately Dipper’s grip loosened, and he watched with narrowed eyes as Bill stepped back and looked up at the wood chipper.

“Bill, don’t,” he said, voice hitching in his throat. He knew it was dumb to even try to plead, but he couldn’t let Wendy get roped up in this. After all, it wasn’t really her Bill was after; he only wanted the rift, but Dipper knew he would do anything to get his hands on it.

Ignoring him entirely, Bill circled around the machine and hefted himself up into the control booth to flip it on. It roared to life with a monstrous grating sound, sending a chill through Dipper that reached all the way to the bone. “Whaddya say, kid? You gonna give me what I want? Or are you gonna let me make your girlfriend into mincemeat?”

“Wendy,” Dipper said in a panic, turning toward the suspended hat. “You’ve gotta help me. If he gets ahold of this he’s going to tear the world apart!”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do, Dipper.” After this Wendy remained silent for a long moment, during which Bill began obnoxiously counting down from twenty, his voice ringing high above the sounds of spinning blades.

Dipper stammered through a string of non-cohesive thoughts before Wendy stopped him.

“Listen, Dipper… My life is not worth ending the world for.”

Everything in him screamed that this wasn’t true, but he couldn’t very well tell her that. “Wendy, I can’t let him do this.”

“You have to,” she returned in a determined voice. “Man, I may be afraid of dying, but I’d never forgive myself if I let you end the world for my sake.”

Dipper hated to admit it, but he already knew he couldn’t (wouldn’t) put his family in danger for her, no matter what feelings he harbored. No sense in ruining everyone’s lives in the name of dumb love.

He screwed his eyes shut and yelled Bill’s name to stop the countdown, aware of the hot tears spilling down his cheeks.

“I’ll miss you,” Wendy said.

Dipper didn’t respond and instead regarded Bill with hate burning in his pupils. “I’m not giving you the rift no matter what you do! Do your worst!”

Bill, for his part, looked a little put off, but he didn’t let that stop him from being facetious. “That can be arranged!” he climbed up to the wood chipper’s shoot, where mere feet below a fan of blades scraped loudly against each other. He balanced on one muddy boot, holding his arms out to his sides comically. “I’ll get that rift some other way! Just you wait, kid!”

Dipper watched Bill’s triangular form manifest before his eyes. At the same time, Wendy’s body went limp, and he heard the hat hit the ground behind him with a soft thud as her spirit coalesced once again with her physical form.

She looked like a lifeless doll as she fell. She didn’t even scream.

Dipper couldn’t bring himself to look away from the violent spray of blood that spewed from the machine’s mouth, despite the way his stomach turned. Bill disappeared with a laugh, one that echoed through the trees for only a moment but in Dipper’s skull for hours. Numbly, he approached the machine and flicked it off. Some feet away, pine needles dripped chunks of flesh and blood onto the grass.

The smell and sights of death prompted him to get sick on the back wheel of the wood chipper, but he didn’t suppose anyone would be trifled by bile over liters of blood. Stomach sour and brain scrambled, he ran full speed back to the Shack, not stopping until his body connected with his bed. On the other side of the room, Mabel was already asleep.

After a minute he made himself sit up and set his backpack in front of him so he could fish out the snow globe and make sure it was patched up properly. It wouldn’t do to have it crack and make Wendy’s sacrifice meaningless.

He moved the globe from hand to hand, staring blankly at the whirling rift inside while his mind tried to process his grief. Could he have stopped Wendy from making a deal with Bill if he had only known? It was too late to wonder.

“Dipper.”

He didn’t hear it at first, being as absorbed in his forlorn thoughts as he was. The second time, he jerked his head up to see Wendy sitting at the end of his bed, the upper part of her body twisted to face him. Unabashedly, he teared up.

“Wendy?” he whispered into the darkness, mindful of his sleeping sister.

She was translucent and bruise-blue from head to toe, and Dipper could only mouth the word “ _Ghost_ ,” for all his shock. At that she smiled, beautiful as ever. She extended one mangled arm toward him and he pressed his palms to his eyes in abject misery. “Oh, Wendy,” he finally managed to say, “I’m so sorry this happened.”

“Don’t be,” she replied, moving her hand as if to brush his hair out of his face, only to have it pass right through. “I was probably as good as dead the second I shook that bastard’s hand.”

“Why?” Dipper managed to ask, finally taking his hands away from his face. He must have looked pitiful to her, but he felt exponentially worse than he looked. “Why did you make a deal with him?”

She pursed her lips and looked down at the floor, making him regret his question. “Let’s just say I thought it was going to be something different than what I got.”

Dipper recalled the time Bill had tricked him into relinquishing his own body and nodded solemnly. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Boy did I learn my lesson,” she said, trying to make light of the situation. Dipper couldn’t bring himself to smile, so Wendy sighed and leaned back. “Listen, dude, you pretty much saved the world back there. I was a necessary casualty.”

“No,” Dipper said before he’d thought about it. “You didn’t have to. I should’ve done something. Anything. If I could have just…” He trailed off, then slowly drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

“Dude, you did what you could. If anything _you_ should be blaming _me_ for putting you in a situation where you had to make that choice.”

“I could never do that,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. “But I’d deserve it.” At that, Dipper shook his head, but before he could voice his opposition a yawn intercepted his words. “Listen, you should get some sleep. Just do me a favor and live your life, all right? I don’t want this whole thing to stop you from being happy.” Her smile faltered for a second but reappeared when she spoke her next words. “Also stay away from wood chippers. They kind of hurt _a lot_.”

Though he knew she meant it flippantly, Dipper felt his stomach begin turning again. “Wendy, don’t go,” he said without really meaning to. His eyes were drooping and more than anything else he wanted to sleep away this nightmare of a day, but at the same time he would kick himself if this were his last chance to ever talk to her again.

After giving it a few seconds worth of thought, Wendy tilted her head and flashed him that relaxed, confident smile he’d fallen in love with from the moment he met her. “How about this: You go to sleep and I’ll come visit you in your dreams.”

“Literally?” Dipper said, feeling vaguely dumb for asking but also excited at the prospect. “I mean, is that really possible?”

“Trust me, it’s possible.”

Dipper hung his hat on the bedpost by his head and laid back. Then, with an awkward laugh, he said, “See you in my dreams, then.” _Like I don’t always?_

Wendy winking at him was the last thing he saw before exhaustion finally laid claim to his consciousness.

His dream world was much brighter than usual, boasting cotton-candy-pink clouds that framed the just-setting sun, a stark contrast to his usually bleak and anxiety-riddled dreams. Here he felt at ease, and Wendy—completely herself again, a superlative vision of pale skin and fluffy waves of red hair—looked as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Dipper supposed she really didn’t anymore.

“See? I told you it would work,” she said to him, breaking his train of thought.

He refused to waste precious time requesting didactic explanations on how this could possibly be working, but it was incredible to say the least. In his current state he didn’t have the capacity to voice all of this aloud and so simply said, “That’s amazing.”

“Damn right it is.” Wendy laughed and playfully punched his shoulder. Dipper reveled in the fact that it was possible for them to touch again.

They spent what could’ve been infinity in the dream world, talking about anything and everything except for the reason they were here like this. For this blissful period of time, Dipper felt like everything was perfect.

And then he opened his eyes.

In his precious last stretch of unconsciousness Wendy pulled him into a tight hug and said her goodbye, and a split-second later he was fully awake, alone in bed with the hazy light of dawn flooding the room. Slowly, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. It took him quite a while to gather his bearings enough to put his feet on the floor, but once he had he knew it was time to face the morning. There was a lot to be done to keep Bill at a stand-still, and Dipper Pines was ready to fight another day.


End file.
